The musical and merry "chickadee-dee-dee" of the tamest of the birds of winter and the somewhat sadder note of the wood pewee mingled with the occasional caw of a crow, the shrill cry of a jay, or the tapping of woodpeckers upon the boles of dead trees.

The canary, among foreign birds, and the linnet and bobolink, among American birds, are familiar examples of the first class; the common robin and the veery of the second; the wood-thrush, the cat-bird, and the mocking-bird, of the third; and the blue-bird, the pewee, and the purple martin, of the fourth class.

A pair of pewees have built immemorially on a jutting brick in the arched entrance to the ice-house.

Once, the children of a man employed about the place oölogized the nest, and the pewees left us for a year or two.

But the pewees came back at last, and one of them is now on his wonted perch, so near my window that I can hear the click of his bill as he snaps a fly on the wing....

The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; and, during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time.

The pewee is the first bird to pipe up in the morning; and, during the early summer he preludes his matutinal ejaculation of pewee with a slender whistle, unheard at any other time.

He saddens with the season, and, as summer declines, he changes his note to eheu, pewee!

" "It is called the Wood Pewee," said the Doctor; "when we come back this afternoon we will stop, and I will try to find its nest to show you.

THE PHOEBE (THE WATER PEWEE) "Smaller, but not a whit less active than the Kingbird is the Phoebe or Water Peweethe small Flycatcher who is almost as familiar about the farm and roadside as the Robin himself.

THE WOOD PEWEE "Among all the other Flycatchers, big, little, and least, I can only tell you of one more, and will choose the Wood Pewee as being the one most likely to interest you.

THE WOOD PEWEE "Among all the other Flycatchers, big, little, and least, I can only tell you of one more, and will choose the Wood Pewee as being the one most likely to interest you.

The Pewee's nest is very prettyalmost as dainty as the Hummingbird's.

" "Then the Wood Pewee builds late, like the Cedar Waxwing and Goldfinch?" said Rap.

The Wood Pewee takes his name from his liking for the woods and his call-note; yet he is quite as fond of our Orchard and the lower side of the garden.

[Illustration: Wood Pewee.]

" "You haven't given us any table for the Wood Pewee," said Dodo, who always took great pleasure in writing in her little book.

" The Wood Pewee Length six and a half inches.

To the children's astonishment they found it was half-past six o'clock; they had been at the farm an hour and a half, and could not stop again until they reached the wood lane where their uncle had promised to look for the Pewee's nest.

" "Pewee, pewee, pe-e-er!" cried a little voice.

" "Pewee, pewee, pe-e-er!" cried a little voice.

"Come softly," said the Doctor, returning to the roadside; "I have found the Pewee's nest; it is quite new, and has no eggs in it as yet.

" "Pewee, pewee, pe-e-er!" cried the nest owner very sadly.

" "Pewee, pewee, pe-e-er!" cried the nest owner very sadly.

Wood Pewee Con'topus vi'rens.